The participants had been chosen for the recruitment, Everybody was shocked at me being on the list.

Juliette rounded up the speech and immediately when she finished up, pretty much everyone started running outside to see who was going to battle who.

I also went outside with a low profile to avoid unnecessary attention.

I read the billboard and it said the following

“

Battle 1:

Karl

VS

Frederic

Battle 2:

Sofia

VS

Veronique

Battle 3:

Hikari

VS

Jean-Pierre

Battle 4:

Chloé

VS

François

Semi-finals match 1: The winner of battle 1 VS the winner of battle 4

Semi-finals match 2: The winner of battle 2 VS the winner of battle 3

Finals:

The winner of SF match 1 VS the winner of SF match 2

p.s If you want to place bets you need to do it at least 5 minutes before the match starts. Otherwise, we won't accept it.

”

Seems like a standard tournament layout.

Although I have always thought that Tournament arcs in Anime and Manga were really exciting, So I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited.

Two things caught my eye though.

It's kind of weird how they structured the semi-finals part. Usually, you would have the winner from battle 1 go against the winner from battle 2. But I guess they wanted to change things up or something.

The other thing was the tipping part, It didn't seem too unusual to have a betting part at a tournament of some sort.

But this was a tournament for recruitment to a Squadron, you wouldn't think people would bet on that sort of stuff.

I eavesdrop to hear what other people things about this.

Eavesdropping is kind of a bad habit of mine if I'm going to be honest.

“Jean-Pierre against this Hikari guy, huh? There's no way Hikari will be able to beat him, Jean-Pierre is super strong.” “I heard Jean-Pierre went through some really tough training China during the first month of summer vacation” “Although he's not as strong as Karl, That guy's unbelievably strong”

I was not looking forward to this duel.

That conversation scared me very much, a whole month of hard training in China is nothing I could beat.

The last part was especially frightening, it's like this Karl guy is insanely powerful.

That whole thing gave me two things, Motivation to start training and beat everyone and fear of getting completely destroyed in the battle.

Antoine approaches me and starts telling me about my situation

“If you didn't already know, you're going to start at this school.” He said and continued to talk about where my dorm was and my locker and similar stuff.

After a couple of minutes I start heading towards my new locker to leave some stuff there. I'm probably going to start training somewhere later.

I only have 2 weeks on me to train, I'm going to have to be very efficient.

I turn the corner that Antoine told me to so I would get to my locker.

I see Camille standing against the wall and a meter away is, uhhh. I can't really remember, but I think it's Karl.

I don't want to interfere but I need to leave this stuff in my locker so I have as much time as possible to train.

I decide to just walk by.

As I'm walking I hear who I'll presume is Karl say

“So if I win, Which I'll of course do, you'll marry me right?”

What a guy, Who would've thought he had a crush on Camille.

“No, I don't want to” I hear Camille saying, that slows me down a bit.

“You don't really have a choice, now do you? This is something our families decided” Karl says but he smiles while doing it so it almost seems he wants to do.

I slow down even further.

What!? Is Camille about get into an arranged marriage?

That's not good at all, but it is the 1800s after all.

I wanted to stop it, but what right do I have to interfere with other families business.

“Come one! Just accept your fate and I'll treat you extra nicely” Karl said with a really sadistic look. You could tell this guy really was a human piece of trash that could probably get away with this stuff because he's from a famous family.

Camille caught eye of me.

Oh, no! I'm going to get dragged into this, aren't I?

Camille runs behind my back and says

“I'd rather marry Hikari than you to be honest”

No! Why did you have to say that?

Karl is going to beat me up real good now. He moves towards me and says

“Oh, yeah? You want to marry this weakling of a man?”

I had to say something.

At this point, I was almost drowning in sweat. I opened my mouth and said

“Oh, hello. How are you doing?” My stupid word choices weren't the worst thing here. Because of my nervousness, I accidentally said the phrase in Swedish!

Camille stares at me in confusion. Meanwhile, Karl gets a glare in his eye and says

“Oh, so you're Swedish huh? You've got a lot of nerve, I'll tell you that.”

The problem is that he said it in Danish.

I know for a fact that the rivalry and hate between Sweden and Denmark were really high during this time, Maybe not as high as in the middle of the 1600s.

I back away a couple of steps. I then take Camille's arm and run away.

“Hey wait, what are you doing?” I hear Camille complain.

We enter a room, I sit down by table and Camille sits on a chair that's in the opposite of the room. I try to catch my breath because my stamina isn't that great. I hear some noise from the other side of the room

“*Sniffle* *Sniffle*”

I wonder what she's doing so I smile and ask

“Hey Camille, are you o-------” I instantly freeze.

Camille looks over and I see tears pouring down her face.

She looks me in the eye. I can see the sadness in her look.

“Please, Hikari. Save me.” Camille says while crying.

How am I supposed to react? I don't want my friend to look like this. Should I go up to Karl and just beat him up? I decide to get information about her situation first. I take a chair and puts it in front of hers. I sit down and ask

“Seems like you're in big trouble. Could you tell me about your backstory and situation first?”

She nodded and proceeded to tell me about it. Her situation was really tragic, Mine in comparison was nothing. I may have lost my father but she's lost a lot more